If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You will have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Probably the shortest answer is that the Rules As Written logically imply the Tippyverse, as Tippy himself stated in his definitive guide.

Basic optimization leads to the Tippyverse.
"Whoa, hey, I can cast a teleportation circle. A lot of people can use it. And I can make it permanent too! I should charge people money! Where could I get away with that?"
"Whoa, hey, this trap is powered by magic. I wonder what other spells could be made to activate the same way." *looks through spell list* "Haha! Create Food and Water. As if that... would... work..."

After that, it's kinda like China: people move to the cities because you can lead a much better life there. People outside the cities tend not to have a good education. The result is basically the Tippyverse.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by rockdeworld

Probably the shortest answer is that the Rules As Written logically imply the Tippyverse, as Tippy himself stated in his definitive guide.

Basic optimization leads to the Tippyverse.
"Whoa, hey, I can cast a teleportation circle. A lot of people can use it. And I can make it permanent too! I should charge people money! Where could I get away with that?"
"Whoa, hey, this trap is powered by magic. I wonder what other spells could be made to activate the same way." *looks through spell list* "Haha! Create Food and Water. As if that... would... work..."

After that, it's kinda like China: people move to the cities because you can lead a much better life there. People outside the cities tend not to have a good education. The result is basically the Tippyverse.

this of course ignores the fact that where as Heroes' Feast is nice food, Create Food and Water is damp cardboard, in flavor and texture.

Feeding a city with the spell is going to get you riots in a few weeks, even if it is free.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by rockdeworld

Probably the shortest answer is that the Rules As Written logically imply the Tippyverse, as Tippy himself stated in his definitive guide.

Basic optimization leads to the Tippyverse.
"Whoa, hey, I can cast a teleportation circle. A lot of people can use it. And I can make it permanent too! I should charge people money! Where could I get away with that?"
"Whoa, hey, this trap is powered by magic. I wonder what other spells could be made to activate the same way." *looks through spell list* "Haha! Create Food and Water. As if that... would... work..."

After that, it's kinda like China: people move to the cities because you can lead a much better life there. People outside the cities tend not to have a good education. The result is basically the Tippyverse.

Hence why I asked what level/density of mages it would take to do that. If you have a scenario like I mentioned in the first post, there's maybe only one mage in the entire world who can cast a permanent teleportation circle. Most places don't even have someone who can cast create food and water.

Last edited by WarKitty; 2012-10-22 at 12:58 PM.

Hail to the Lord of Death and Destruction!CATNIP FOR THE CAT GOD! YARN FOR THE YARN THRONE! MILK FOR THE MILK BOWL!

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Use Create Water for over-the-top hydroponics, and give the plants a once-over from the good ol' Prestidigitation cleanup squad in leu of pesticides. Purify Food and Water to improve the yield further. Use Light spell-clocks for street lamps and Amanuensis spell-clocks for a printing press, and you've got a semi-functional anacronism-tastic city.

It probably gets much more interesting if you don't limit yourself to cantrips.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

In that case I would say it depends on a few things.

First, how willing is that caster to make an effort to set up a teleportation network? Even if it's only one caster, setting up a network of 10 cities will turn those cities into the most popular destinations for merchants, which will increase the presitge and income of the city, which will draw more people there, and you get at least a mini-Tippyverse. Incidentally, that caster will also have wealth on par with some great wyrms after it's set up and he's gathered royalties for a few years.

Second, even if that caster is unable or unwilling to do this, do magical traps work in your setting? Magical traps are notoriously cheap and easy to create, and all it would take is some traps of basic spells like create food and water and cure minor wounds to create, at least locally, a post-scarcity economy. Once this happens, people will flock to the city where they give out free food and medical care, and you get the same result as before, but with each city being more self-sufficient as there is no easy transportation between them.

In short, if magical traps work as per RAW or if there's even one economically ambition wizard capable of casting teleportation circle, something like the Tippyverse is a logical result.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by WarKitty

Well yeah, but I'm not terribly interested in the specific idea (I had no clue it referred to something so specific or I'd have worded the first post differently). I'm interested in where magic starts really messing with the structure of society.

Basically, I'm interested in what level you get the "mages take over and totally revamp everything" hitting.

It's not so much "mages take over" as it is "magic overturns comfortable assumptions about how the world works". Just one example is how flying creatures/items make your traditional open-air castle much less defensible than it'd be against ground-bound humans. The existence of Charm Person and similar magics would likewise require contingencies for all the ways a spellcaster could mess with a person and their perceptions.

Still, while there are some low-level gems (Continual Flame, Create Water, and Cantrip all come to mind as spells that could significantly change basic assumptions), spells usually start getting into society-altering effects at around 4th or 5th level.

Also bear in mind that while Tippy's actual tippyverse (as opposed to generic high-op caster campaigns) is a really cool setting, magitech futures are not the only outcome a D&D world can face. Maybe mages have developed a guild to keep magic rare, either to line their own pockets or to avoid the magical arms races that could happen if everyone could get cool swag. Maybe all your players agree that high fantasy is worth not looking too closely at the worldbuilding assumptions. So the answer is anywhere from any levels of casters (if low-level casters are common enough to make up a majority of the population) to never (if high-level casters do get to have their fun, but prefer to do it on planes other than the prime).

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Regardless of its poor flavor and texture, even one create food and water trap in a city will dramatically change that city's economy. Even if the owner of the device charges for meals, he can charge a tiny fraction of what it normally costs to eat for a day, and consequently the trap's presence frees up significant sums of money for other purposes. If he allows the device to be freely used by anyone who wants to use it, he'll be freeing up a rather large chunk of change, since while it's unlikely that people would completely give up on regular food, many people of low-to-no income will use it for the majority of their meals. Adding the prestidigitation trap would likely have a significant number of people give up on normal food altogether. There would remain a market for "normal" food, but the prices would soar. This is avaliable from either level one or level 3 (I can't remember if magical traps require craft wondrous item or not.)

The next stage would be probably another trap, this one producing wall of stone. This provides the city with unlimited building material allowing it to expand indefinitely for practically no cost. It can be supported by either making the trap itself intelligent and giving it ranks in know (architecture and engineering) or by an expert with that skill and UMD carrying an eternal wand of fabricate. The trap comes online at level 9, making it intelligent comes online at 15. In any case, portability is paramount.

Next up is permanency applied to wall of fire. When paired with a large source of incoming water, either being brought in by aquaduct or produced by yet more magic, you get unlimited energy in the form of steam driven devices. This becomes available at level 12.

These are just the first few off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more.

I am not seaweed. That's a B.

Praise I've received

Spoiler

Show

Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell

Kelb, recently it looks like you're the Avatar of Reason in these forums, man.

Originally Posted by LTwerewolf

[...] bringing Kelb in on your side in a rules fight is like bringing Mike Tyson in on your side to fight a toddler. You can, but it's such massive overkill.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by WarKitty

Ok, so...other than the whole teleport circle mess, what are the requirements for "magic completely rewrites the rules of society"? Keeping tippyverse just as based on the one spell seems sort of...boring.

The time to imagine how society would evolve with casters finding these spells and then do a setting writeup, really.

It's all in the setting at that point. Sure, you can keep the assumptions of the default and established settings or you can take a page from the example of the Tippyverse and Eberron and examine what effects the magic you do have bouncing around would have, especially if you have some idea of the timeline of magical development in that world.

Originally Posted by Kazyan

Use Create Water for over-the-top hydroponics, and give the plants a once-over from the good ol' Prestidigitation cleanup squad in leu of pesticides. Purify Food and Water to improve the yield further. Use Light spell-clocks for street lamps and Amanuensis spell-clocks for a printing press, and you've got a semi-functional anacronism-tastic city.

It probably gets much more interesting if you don't limit yourself to cantrips.

Like Plant Growth, which further increases the efficiency of any hydroponics/3D farms by a cool third. Or Lesser Planar Binding which lets you get a lantern archon and have it likely give you a reduced rate for increasing the safety and orderliness of a city by using its free continual flame SLA to provide public lighting with a bit more efficiency/economy than oodles of light spell clocks.

Originally Posted by Keld Denar

+3 Girlfriend is totally unoptimized. You are better off with a +1 Keen Witty girlfriend and then appling Greater Magic Make-up to increase her enhancement bonus.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

I want a world where magic has a serious effect, but without having the "lol u suck peon" if you're not a full caster. So where there are still ordinary fighters in the town guard, diplomacy is still an important factor in politics, and so forth.

I think create food and water is a level 4 spell? So it wouldn't be available at level 1.

Hail to the Lord of Death and Destruction!CATNIP FOR THE CAT GOD! YARN FOR THE YARN THRONE! MILK FOR THE MILK BOWL!

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by WarKitty

I want a world where magic has a serious effect, but without having the "lol u suck peon" if you're not a full caster. So where there are still ordinary fighters in the town guard, diplomacy is still an important factor in politics, and so forth.

I think create food and water is a level 4 spell? So it wouldn't be available at level 1.

That simply doesn't exist for player characters after a certain point and depends upon you and your players more than the assumptions of the setting. And there's no point in it for NPCs, given that they're already shafted with such wonderful classes as commoner and warrior.

Though if you've already run into it with yourself and your players, then there's no real risk in including that as part of the assumptions of the setting, since they've received the memo. If you haven't, well, depends on what you're having them do and what level they're at. A fighter without PrCing into something more useful is always going to be terribly outmoded increasingly after level 10 though, simply due to the flaws of the class.

As for diplomacy, that's always going to be important, because anything else gets too close to mutually assured destruction or that state is simply absorbed by the other state until you reach an equilibrium where MAD can exist. Defenses get developed and life goes on with the great game merely having more tools at its disposal.

Originally Posted by Keld Denar

+3 Girlfriend is totally unoptimized. You are better off with a +1 Keen Witty girlfriend and then appling Greater Magic Make-up to increase her enhancement bonus.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Tippyverse - and by extension, all highly revamped magitech societies - are a very different thing from the caster/noncaster power split. The latter is baked into 3.5 D&D, but it's not hard to think of a society where magic accounts for many modern conveniences, while the ability of magic to affect living creatures is severely reduced.

Unfortunately for the latter, the only ways to stop magic in D&D involve other magic. (Or houserules that give certain mundane objects effective magic-stopping properties, which comes out to much the same thing.)

You have an even better reason to avoid having casters be at the top of the social pyramid. It makes them very visible targets, and ruling the masses takes time away from studying ultimate arcane power. So while there's nothing you can really do about class balance, you're not forced to have despotic casters either.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by WarKitty

I want a world where magic has a serious effect, but without having the "lol u suck peon" if you're not a full caster. So where there are still ordinary fighters in the town guard, diplomacy is still an important factor in politics, and so forth.

I think create food and water is a level 4 spell? So it wouldn't be available at level 1.

Upon review you're almost right. Create food and water is a 3rd level cleric spell. I got it mixed up with create water. So the food&water trap is available from level 5.

None of what I brought up before has any bearing on combat at all except perhaps in the form of fortification and/or vehicles.

Also, add to the list Wall of iron trap. It functions just like wall of stone as I described above, but for the creation of metallic objects via fabricate. This makes tools and machine components essentially free. Comes online at level 11.

Last edited by Kelb_Panthera; 2012-10-22 at 02:33 PM.

I am not seaweed. That's a B.

Praise I've received

Spoiler

Show

Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell

Kelb, recently it looks like you're the Avatar of Reason in these forums, man.

Originally Posted by LTwerewolf

[...] bringing Kelb in on your side in a rules fight is like bringing Mike Tyson in on your side to fight a toddler. You can, but it's such massive overkill.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by WarKitty

I want a world where magic has a serious effect, but without having the "lol u suck peon" if you're not a full caster. So where there are still ordinary fighters in the town guard, diplomacy is still an important factor in politics, and so forth.

I think create food and water is a level 4 spell? So it wouldn't be available at level 1.

Side note: you should really choose a class with access to Spot, Listen, and Sense Motive to be a town guard. Fighters are TERRIBLE guards.

Originally Posted by Chilingsworth

Wow! Not only was that awesome, I think I actually kinda understand Archeron now. If all the "intermediate" outer planes got that kind of treatment, I doubt there would be anywhere near as many critics of their utility.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

Also, add to the list Wall of iron trap. It functions just like wall of stone as I described above, but for the creation of metallic objects via fabricate. This makes tools and machine components essentially free. Comes online at level 11.

actually, just combine the Wall of Fire, Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, and Wall of Sand traps together in a Wise and Intelligent golem. it can then build skyscrapers

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

The rules are definitely there for a magitech society- Kelb illustrates some great uses.

However, that won't necessarily make it a Tippyverse. You just get bigger numbers- more people, bigger population density, neater weapons. You still have cities being built in places with resources that traps cannot make- like the material components you need to make such traps- and cities on trade routes. Without easy teleport, you have a world that needs to civilize its surroundings because extracted resources need to travel to population and production centers.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by Spuddles

The rules are definitely there for a magitech society- Kelb illustrates some great uses.

However, that won't necessarily make it a Tippyverse. You just get bigger numbers- more people, bigger population density, neater weapons. You still have cities being built in places with resources that traps cannot make- like the material components you need to make such traps- and cities on trade routes. Without easy teleport, you have a world that needs to civilize its surroundings because extracted resources need to travel to population and production centers.

quite wrong.

Tippyverse is done using nothing with exotic material components, just a plane adapting to having Instant Travel. a simple Spell Component Pouch is all that is needed.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by Spuddles

The rules are definitely there for a magitech society- Kelb illustrates some great uses.

However, that won't necessarily make it a Tippyverse. You just get bigger numbers- more people, bigger population density, neater weapons. You still have cities being built in places with resources that traps cannot make- like the material components you need to make such traps- and cities on trade routes. Without easy teleport, you have a world that needs to civilize its surroundings because extracted resources need to travel to population and production centers.

Exotic components are the hardest to come by, but only just.

Two options:

The ultimate in magical creation: Wish. It's not easy to come by and it's somethin' nasty expensive, but it's an option.

Inter-planar trade: screw the berks on the material. Get in good with some genies, or start sending caravans to union. You're producing more than enough gold since you've ripped the economy wide open already.

Besides, once somebody's actually powerful enough to cast teleportation circle the rest that's already in place means you're now officially in tippyverse.

I am not seaweed. That's a B.

Praise I've received

Spoiler

Show

Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell

Kelb, recently it looks like you're the Avatar of Reason in these forums, man.

Originally Posted by LTwerewolf

[...] bringing Kelb in on your side in a rules fight is like bringing Mike Tyson in on your side to fight a toddler. You can, but it's such massive overkill.

A handful of wizards with a once per day use of teleport won't have the effect of scale that teleportation circle will. I suppose a sorcerer polymorphed into something very big carrying a great deal of bags of holding and magically shrunk items could move goods around at a similar efficiency.

Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

You're producing more than enough gold since you've ripped the economy wide open already.

From what? A Wish trap? Otherwise you're making iron or bland food that goes away in a little bit or turning cows into salt. You still have to find someone who wants that sort of stuff. Which means trade, transport of goods and materials, etc., if you really want to try and make an economy out of producing mundane equipment that you can't actually use to make more traps with.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

A handful of wizards with a once per day use of teleport won't have the effect of scale that teleportation circle will. I suppose a sorcerer polymorphed into something very big carrying a great deal of bags of holding and magically shrunk items could move goods around at a similar efficiency.

except none of that involves exotic Material components that cant be pulled out of a spell component pouch, anything upto 1000g of material

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth

Side note: you should really choose a class with access to Spot, Listen, and Sense Motive to be a town guard. Fighters are TERRIBLE guards.

I sort of figured they wouldn't be the entirety of the town guard. What police force worth it's salt would have everyone with the exact same skills? You stick fighters on places like the main gates where their job is to ensure people stop and put up with searches.

In general: I think I've been assuming to date that most people have never even heard of spells above 4th or 5th level. Spells like wish exist only in dusty tomes that no one can understand, or in half-forgotten legends of bardic lore.

Speaking of which...the bard class doesn't get nearly enough love for mid-magic settings. I think I'll start using it more for aristocrats.

Hail to the Lord of Death and Destruction!CATNIP FOR THE CAT GOD! YARN FOR THE YARN THRONE! MILK FOR THE MILK BOWL!

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

except none of that involves exotic Material components that cant be pulled out of a spell component pouch, anything upto 1000g of material

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Regardless, the price in materials that it takes to make a trap come from somewhere. As a PC, it is abstracted as "materials worth gold pieces". Those materials have to be found from somewhere. There aren't any spells that can make them, therefore there are no traps that will make them. Which means you actually have to physically grow, harvest, mine, or hunt them.

Just the 1000 gp amber that you need for a teleportation circle doesn't magically come out of a spell components pouch. You actually have to go out and find it. Maybe you should look up the rules on material components? One thing the Tippyverse is a product of is near-absolute devotion to RAW, so it is important that we're all familiar with it in such a discussion.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by Spuddles

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Take the Spell Component pouch, turn it upside down, stick your hand underneith it, and expect diamond dust: It cascades out because grains of diamond Dust have no material value and the Pouch magically creates the materials. You then use fabricate on the resultant pile of dust, to get a regular diamond. only if you are Anal like the off joke in the strip where V is buying Diamond Dust does this matter as far as the game is concerned.

Re: Minimum requirements for Tippyverse?

Originally Posted by toapat

Take the Spell Component pouch, turn it upside down, stick your hand underneith it, and expect diamond dust: It cascades out because grains of diamond Dust have no material value and the Pouch magically creates the materials. You then use fabricate on the resultant pile of dust, to get a regular diamond. only if you are Anal like the off joke in the strip where V is buying Diamond Dust does this matter as far as the game is concerned.

Every single material can be gained in this way.

Read the fabricate description. Getting a bunch of - value diamond dust just gives you a - value diamond.

Gratz on the rock.

Originally Posted by The Random NPC

Wall of Iron doesn't go away, neither does the water. The food doesn't so much as go away, as it rots really fast.

That was poor parsing on my part; regardless, those are things are of irrelevant value. You're just making stuff for mundanes that no one of any real import (ie, rival casters) cares about. Their value quickly approaches zero, as no one wants to trade for them because they can make their own. Those that do want it don't produce very much of anything. If they do produce a lot of something valuable (spell components, materials for crafting), they're probably going to be within a rival's hegemony. Which means trading amber for onyx or whatever.

Traps of make mundane item is good for solving the day to day stuff, but the expansion and growth of your society runs on things you cannot make traps out of.

Which means there are pieces of territory you are interested in. Which means you need trade routes. And if teleport is on the table, it means Tippyverse.